Through its independent research and development (IR&D) program, the SEI conducts feasibility studies to determine whether an area of software engineering warrants further development by the SEI.

The following feasibility studies were initiated in late FY2001
and continued in FY2002:

Agent-Based Architectures: Intelligent agents are critical to making global and local resource-allocation decisions that optimize the utility provided by resource-consuming services. This study examines the application of adaptive agent-based architectures for mobile devices.

Analysis of Enterprise Integration Applications: Enterprise integration can provide timely and accurate exchange of consistent information between business functions to support strategic and tactical business goals in a seamless manner. This project investigates whether breakthroughs are possible in integrating information systems across an enterprise.

Flow-Service-Quality Systems Engineering: Foundations for Network System Analysis and Design: This study investigates a unifying approach to large-scale network system analysis, specification, design, verification, implementation, and operation. The result is an emerging technology called flow-service-quality engineering. It focuses on complexity reduction and survivability improvement, and provides engineering and management foundations for network system development. (See the SEI technical note Flow-Service-Quality (FSQ) Engineering: Foundations for Network System Analysis and Development for more details.)

INVESTIGATING NEW AREAS OF WORK
One of this year's new focus areas, Predictable Assembly from Certifiable Components, began as an exploratory independent research and development (IR&D) project in FY2001.

Several feasibility studies were started late in FY2000 and continued into FY2002:

Fusion: This project studies the feasibility of multi-source data fusion for the predictive analysis of network intrusions. The goal is to identify and exploit data sources to gain insight into the likely targets and behaviors involved in network intrusions, so that defensive and preventive strategies can be devised.

Open-Source Software: This study examines open-source software development and management practices to determine their viability and applicability to DoD systems.

Predictable Assembly from Certifiable Components: This study addresses the fundamental challenge of building systems from components. This is now an SEI focus area (see the Predictable Assembly from Certifiable Components section for more details).

Quality Software Development @ Internet Speed: This study examines how Internet software is developed today, with particular emphasis on the development processes used by Internet companies and the extent to which these processes are different from traditional software-development processes. (See the SEI technical report Discovery Colloquium: Quality Software Development @ Internet Speed for more details.)

Learning from Software Development and Acquisition Failures: This project investigates how to prevent or reduce software-intensive system failures by detecting patterns and trends related to those failures.

Technology Change Management in High-Maturity Organizations: This project studies the practices used by high-maturity organizations to introduce software engineering innovations to determine which practices are most effective and how they might be captured for wider dissemination
to other organizations.

These projects are described in detail in the SEI technical report SEI Independent Research and Development Projects (CMU/SEI-2002-TR-023).